Facebook Intros Good Developer Seal Of Approval

Preferred Marketing Developer Program highlights expertise in key social development areas, connects brands with developers.

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Facebook announced Thursday its new Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program, which merges the company's Preferred Developer Consultant (PDC) program and its Marketing API program. The goal of the PMD program, according to a Developer Blog post by John Li, manager of Facebook's Marketing API Program, is to "bring developers to the right clients and make it possible for any brand or company to find consultants who can work with them to build comprehensive Facebook campaigns and presences."

The PMD program--like the Preferred Developer Consultant and Marketing API programs before it--is designed to connect brands with developers. In his blog post, Li says the first new class of PMDs includes 141 companies from 21 countries that were not previously represented by the other two programs. This brings the total of companies in the PMD family to 232, headquartered in 35 countries.

-- Connect to leads via a new lookup tool that replaces the PDC and Ads API directories. Clients can find developers by geography and expertise and read case studies and feedback.

-- Show specific expertise with Pages, Ads, Apps, and Insights that they can display on their websites. These qualifications will also appear alongside PMD company names in the lookup tool, making it easy for potential clients to locate PMDs by focus.

-- Gain a deep understanding of the program's goals and processes from a revamped developer website.

-- Save time in the applications process by using Facebook's new unified submission form. Now, developers can apply whenever they are ready, instead of through periodic rounds.

The PMD program comprises four categories: Insights, Apps, Publishing, and Advertising. Developers can be certified by having shown expertise in one, more than one, or in all four.

The Dachis Group, which is certified in the Pages, Apps, and Insights categories, said the new designation will help companies more easily identify proven social development practitioners from among the thousands of entities now claiming to be social experts, and it will make developers more effective at what they do.

"Collaborating with Facebook will give us the opportunity to surface even deeper conversation data for our customers," said Erik Huddleston, executive VP of product and CTO of the Dachis Group. "The days of measuring likes and followers as meaningful ROI are over, and being able to leverage Facebook's Insights API has significantly accelerated the process. Companies looking to engage with social business solution providers will be able to derive even deeper insights about their Facebook efforts, which will lead to more impressive Facebook campaigns."

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Since writing this story I have been receiving lots of messaging from people letting me know that the company they represent has earned the Facebook PMD designation. I'm wondering how much it matters to the organizations that are engaging marketers and developers.

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